If you want to use old latin expressions, and also make people uncomfortable, you can pronounce it the way the romans did. Always pronounce “c” as “k”, and “v” as our “w”, to begin with. “Veni. Vidi. Vici.” becomes “Weni. Widi. Wiki.”, et ketera.
In church latin yes. For example we say “vice versa”, not “wike wersa” (“wike” being two syllables btw). If it helps think of the w as our u. “ui-ke uer-sa”.
One could say that “u” is a lazily written “V”. This was before we had the concept of upper and lower case letters. The roman alphabet used for fancy writing is pretty much exactly as our upper case letters. This was written with a flat brush, but they also had a more cursive everyday alphabet which is quite hard for us to read. Eventually writing with pens made the alphabet evolve into uncial letters that look kind of Tolkienesque. To mark the beginning of a verse they used the old roman fancy letter to have something that stood out in the text, i.e. a versal. “V” is a versal, and “u” was the running text version, but it was considered the same letter. For example they would write “Vniuersum” where we write “Universum” now. Then some complicated things happened in history that necessitated different sounds and the pronounciation split into v, u, and w, over time.
If you want to use old latin expressions, and also make people uncomfortable, you can pronounce it the way the romans did. Always pronounce “c” as “k”, and “v” as our “w”, to begin with. “Veni. Vidi. Vici.” becomes “Weni. Widi. Wiki.”, et ketera.
Ok, maybe I am stupid, regarding the v/w sound, but would you normaly pronounce the V in “Veni. Vidi. Vici.” like the v-sound in “give” or “have”?
In church latin yes. For example we say “vice versa”, not “wike wersa” (“wike” being two syllables btw). If it helps think of the w as our u. “ui-ke uer-sa”.
oh yeah right, wasn’t v the precursor to u?
One could say that “u” is a lazily written “V”. This was before we had the concept of upper and lower case letters. The roman alphabet used for fancy writing is pretty much exactly as our upper case letters. This was written with a flat brush, but they also had a more cursive everyday alphabet which is quite hard for us to read. Eventually writing with pens made the alphabet evolve into uncial letters that look kind of Tolkienesque. To mark the beginning of a verse they used the old roman fancy letter to have something that stood out in the text, i.e. a versal. “V” is a versal, and “u” was the running text version, but it was considered the same letter. For example they would write “Vniuersum” where we write “Universum” now. Then some complicated things happened in history that necessitated different sounds and the pronounciation split into v, u, and w, over time.
oh dang that’s so cool! thank you for sharing